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The varying fortunes of this struggle between Greek and literary Latin as it had been formed under the Republic, belong to a later period: at present we must return to complete a general survey of the prose of the Ciceronian age. Historical writing at Rome, as we have seen, had hitherto been in the form either of annals or memoirs.
Obedient, therefore, to my Superior, I wrote, in this our cell of Pluscarden, a Latin book containing the histories of times past, but when I came to tell of matters wherein, as Maro says, "pars magna fui," I grew weary of such rude, barbarous Latin as alone I am skilled to indite, for of the manner Ciceronian, as it is now practised by clerks of Italy, I am not master: my book, therefore, I left unfinished, breaking off in the middle of a sentence.
They wrote Italian, not only because they could not vie with the Ciceronian elegance of the philologists, but because, like Machiavelli, they could only record in a living tongue the living results of their own immediate observations and we may add in the case of Machiavelli, of his observation of the past and because, as in the case of Guicciardini, Varchi, and many others, what they most desired was, that their view of the course of events should have as wide and deep a practical effect as possible.
I do not expect from him the Ciceronian epistolary style; but I will content myself with the Swiss simplicity and truth. I hope you extend your acquaintance at Paris, and frequent variety of companies; the only way of knowing the world; every set of company differs in some particulars from another; and a man of business must, in the course of his life, have to do with all sorts.
Pitt declared that the French Revolution was the severest trial which Providence had ever yet inflicted on the nations of the earth; and, claiming that there was no security in negotiating with France, owing to her instability, he summed up his case in the Ciceronian phrase: Pacem nolo quia infida.
To-day there are Germans who can translate the Greek classics into Latin; and if their style is not pure Ciceronian, let our detractors remember that styles change with the times. Mankind is always discontented, and prefers the old to the modern. I can quite understand that our German philosophers adapted their style to their audiences and their lofty subjects.
But a man who is able to write a sentence in which Lessing's Works are spoken of as if the reading of them tended to make men "transcendentalists of the supra-nebulous order" no more deserves a scourging by angels for his devotion to German literature than Saint Jerome did for being a Ciceronian.
Undeniably there was more taste and more spirit in this younger oratorical literature than in the Hortensian and Ciceronian put together; but we are not able to judge how far, amidst the storms of the revolution which rapidly swept away the whole of this richly-gifted group with the single exception of Pollio, those better germs attained development. The time allotted to them was but too brief.
They wished the Lessons to be written In Ciceronian style and the hymns to be modelled on the Odes of Horace. Ferreri's attempt at reforming the Breviary dealt with the hymns, some of which he re-wrote in very noble language, but he was so steeped in pagan mythology that he even introduced heathen expressions and allusions, His work was a failure.
The age of Queen Anne was compared to the Ciceronian age of Latin, or the age of Aristotle and Plato in Greek. But in both these cases, as indeed in that of every known ancient people, the language, after reaching its acme of perfection, had begun to decay and become debased: the golden age of Latinity had passed into a silvern, and that into a brazen and an iron age.
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